International Union of Operating Engineers headquarters in Washington, D.C., sent $150,000 to Kentucky Family Values. United Association of Plumbers & Pipefitters sent $100,000 from Annapolis, Maryland.

Kentucky Family Values TV ads bashed Bevin’s business and personal history without mentioning right-to-work, though Louisville NPR affiliate WFPL reported the issue was “at the heart of get-out-the-vote efforts on both sides.”

In addition to funding ads against Bevin, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and other national labor unions breathlessly promoted Conway as the only hope for Kentucky workers.

“For Kentuckians, Jack Conway may be the last obstacle standing between conservatives and their dream of a right-to-work law that would prove devastating to the state’s working people,” IBEW warned its members.

“Our livelihoods are at stake Nov. 3,” the Kentucky State AFL-CIO union coalition said days before the election, calling right-to-work “devastating to union and non-union workers alike.”

“The House stands alone,” read a bleak Kentucky AFL-CIO news headline the morning after Bevin was elected. “Governor-elect Matt Bevin’s extremism is nowhere plainer than in his hatred for unions.”

Republican right-to-work supporters who control the Kentucky Senate have been blocked from making Kentucky a right-to-work state by Beshear and majority Democrats in the Kentucky House.